PlayBook Tablet Has a Spotty Day One in San Francisco

The 7-inch PlayBook is Research In Motion's entry into the tablet market. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet launched Tuesday, and the tablet turned in some limp results in the wired city of San Francisco.

Wired.com contacted every San Francisco store that agreed to carry the PlayBook, including Best Buy, Office Depot and Radio Shack, to get an idea of how well the tablet was selling. The results were a mixed bag, but for the most part, underwhelming.

Technology observers typically view a product launch as a strong indicator of how well they’ll perform over their shelf life, because Day One tends to generate the highest number of sales from enthusiastic early adopters.

One Office Depot completely sold out of the PlayBook by 2 p.m. PST, one Best Buy location “sold a lot,” according to a sales rep, and only had the 16-GB model left, and none of the 16 Radio Shack locations in the city have even received PlayBooks yet. The other Office Depots had plenty left in stock.

None of the stores reported having long lines as a result of the PlayBook, like you would typically see at an Apple store whenever a new iPhone or iPad gets released. (Although, to be fair, long lines would be difficult to generate when the PlayBook is available at so many stores, as opposed to an iPad available at a small number of Apple stores.)

Nonetheless, the fact there are so many PlayBooks around here offers a glimpse into how well the tablet is selling on launch day, considering that San Francisco is home to many tech-savvy consumers who are quick to grab the latest shiny gadget.

Elsewhere around the world, the PlayBook’s launch doesn’t look promising — not surprising for a product that many technology critics have dubbed incomplete and “half-baked.”

Over in New York, Barron’s called the PlayBook release a “stealth” launch because of poor visibility of the tablet in stores — one had to ask an employee just to see a PlayBook at a Best Buy, because the product had no prominent placement. In one store, the PlayBook was in the middle of downloading a software update, so no one was trying it, Barron’s wrote.

Similar to Wired.com’s digging, Barron’s found that only one store was sold out, and when asked how many sold, the clerk said, “We had a lot of them.”

Meanwhile, in Canada, Loop Insight’s Jim Dalrymple scoped out major retail store Future Shop, which had PlayBooks as well. Similarly, there was no line of customers aching to get their hands on a PlayBook, and store employees told Dalrymple that zero people had pre-ordered the tablet.